The New York Times has announced that come April its new Jerusalem bureau chief will be Jodi Rudoren, formerly a politics reporter at the paper. (Current chief Ethan Bronner will cover national legal affairs.) This feels like the World Cup or something, one of those seminal events that occurs far less frequently than annually and that is bound to send us into a tizzy, given the Kremlinological intricacy with which the paper of record’s coverage of Israel is examined, particularly by the Jewish community.

Rudoren—who used to be Jodi Wilgoren; she and her husband, Gary Ruderman, merged their names—is now the education editor of the Times. But the experience that likely best suited her to covering a fraught story packed with true believers on both sides was her tenure in 2003 as the newspaper’s beat reporter for the Howard Dean campaign. (For example, a “Wilgoren Watch” blog appointed itself a pro-Dean ombudsman of her coverage.)

The New York Times has announced that come April its new Jerusalem bureau chief will be Jodi Rudoren, formerly a politics reporter at the paper. (Current chief Ethan Bronner will cover national legal affairs.) This feels like the World Cup or something, one of those seminal events that occurs far less frequently than annually and that is bound to send us into a tizzy, given the Kremlinological intricacy with which the paper of record’s coverage of Israel is examined, particularly by the Jewish community.

Rudoren—who used to be Jodi Wilgoren; she and her husband, Gary Ruderman, merged their names—is now the education editor of the Times. But the experience that likely best suited her to covering a fraught story packed with true believers on both sides was her tenure in 2003 as the newspaper’s beat reporter for the Howard Dean campaign. (For example, a “Wilgoren Watch” blog appointed itself a pro-Dean ombudsman of her coverage.)